13 Answers
13

This information is necessary in order to calculate the moon's visibility and altitude on a given night. The Sanhedrin needed to do this in order to cross-check witnesses' reports of having seen the moon, which would then be used to set the dates of Rosh Chodesh and of the holidays.

Yes, it's the gematria of "lev"="heart", and the Talmud says that the Avnet atoned for sinful thoughts of the heart. Similarly, I've also heard (don't recall in whose name) that our daily thanks to God for "girding Israel with strength" refers to self-control.

The Malbim explains the role of the Avnet as taking our most animalistic emotions -- lust (מכנסיים) and rage (כותונת) -- and keeping them subdued (sublimated?) deep down in the soul, so they don't bubble up. (I'm not doing justice to Malbim's prose here.)

Is there a source that lists these facts about the gematriaos of words in the various sefarim of Tanach (yours here, Chanoch's post in Shisha Ve'esrim about no 26-word in Esther)? I'm curious how you came across this.
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AlexMay 6 '10 at 17:50

I don't know how Chanoch thought of it to begin with. But I then wrote a computer program to calculate it. Then it's easy to update with the number of your choosing.
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ShalomMay 6 '10 at 18:08

2

I originally saw the "no 26-word in Esther" in an article published in the Journal of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists. They had been doing what Shalom describes: using a computer program to compute gematrias in Megillat Esther.
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ChanochMay 10 '10 at 2:09

32 is the greatest number of civil dates that can be part of a single Jewish month.

If a Summer Rosh Chodesh for a 30-day month happens to fall, somewhere in the extreme North or South, on a day when nightfall is before midnight, and if by the following Rosh Chodesh, nightfall has moved to after midnight, then your Jewish month has contact with 32 civil days! Note that this works whether you use sunset or your favorite value for Tzeit (though you don't have to go as far north for the latter).

I wonder whether that's the correct understanding of the Yalkut, though. It derives the extra "king" from the word "echad," but then that's repeated for each of the other kings too, not just the king of Yericho. And indeed, the version in Bereishis Rabbah (and the corrected version in Yalkut) both mention 62 (31 x 2) rather than 32.
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AlexMay 6 '10 at 20:41